Duval educators, others discuss ending school-to-prison pipeline

Data shows Duval's black students are more likely to be suspended.

The education committee of the NAACP’s local branch will develop a plan aimed at ending Duval County’s school-to-prison pipeline, group officials said Tuesday.

About 130 people attended an NAACP-sponsored community meeting at the Legends Center on Soutel Drive to discuss how to end the dynamic.

The meeting featured panelists from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, the Washington-based Advancement Project, members of the Duval County School Board and the local and state branches of the NAACP.

A federal report using 2009 survey data cited by some of Tuesday’s participants showed that black students in Duval received out-of-school suspensions three times more often than white students.

Black students are often punished for vague and less serious offenses than students of other races, said Isaiah Rumlin, president of the local NAACP branch.

“Punishment of white students is usually reserved for clearly defined actions that pose a threat to school safety, like weapons or drugs,” he told the crowd. “Florida leads this trend.”

Duval Superintendent Nikolai Vitti didn’t disagree with the data showing disparities between the discipline of black students and other races, but he also cited what he considered to be several successes by the district.

A 2011 report by the state Department of Juvenile Justice showed that Duval public schools accounted for 10 percent of the 4,550 delinquency referrals to the department.

Duval had the lowest percent of referrals compared to the state’s six largest school systems, Vitti told the crowd.

He also noted recent dramatic drops in the number of out-of-school suspensions in the system.

To help reduce the racial disparities in the district’s discipline, Vitti said the system needs to expand the Alternative to Out-of-School Suspension, provide conflict resolution training for parents and students, introduce a parent academy to empower parents on knowing how to engage the system, and improve early learning programs.

School Board member Paula Wright said the numbers can be depressing but the community can work together to change the figures by being solution oriented.

All of you doubters look at Miami-Dade. They have a program that avoids sending kids to jail unless real crime offenses. Their rate of crime has gone down tremendously and keeps those kids from getting their records tainted. It saves money and reduces crime.

Duval needs to get out of their cocoon and look at the other counties in Florida.

@Baba O'Reilly This is what happens when you apply a broad brush to a situation. Not every black child that is in the gifted program is there because they have been given a pass. My neighbor's child, who happens to be black, is in the gifted program and quite exceptional. She could read at three (was in the Mayor's book club) and has consistently performed throughout school (right now at 10 she is doing pre-algebra). In no way is she being given a pass and it is a slight to her hard work to say just because she is black that she cannot perform at a high level.

True, her parents are actively involved (typical helicopter parents) but that just goes to show what can be done when parents provide the enrichment most of these kids need (which I think was the new Superintendent's point about working with parents). But, when you make sweeping statements you need to be aware that not all black children are behavior problems or don't want to learn.

I've seen both sides of the issue as I did some substitute teaching when I first moved here (I'm not a teacher) and have seen how one child (black or white) can prevent all the others in a class receiving a quality education.

"School to prison pipeline." Sort of like "fiscal cliff." Verbal pollution. Here's an idea. Get some literate people at the school board. Dump all of last year's files of suspended students on tables. Maybe clear out a bureaucrat or two for the week. Make a list of the reasons for suspension. Start two piles, one for whites, one for blacks. Compare the results, white vs. black. If blacks were suspended for lighter reasons than whites, the NAACP has a point. If there were simply more blacks causing major problems than whites, then the NAACP does not have a point. End of story. Except for race politics.